Report underlines unemployment, income gap in U.S.

Unemployment rate remained high and the income gap continued to enlarge in the United States despite the gradual recovery of the U.S. economy, says a report on the U.S. human rights record on Friday.

Quoting figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the report notes that the unemployment rate of the U.S. in January 2015 stood at 5.7 percent, with some nine million people jobless and 2.8 million of them having been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.

The report titled "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014" was released by China's State Council Information Office.

Although overall U.S. unemployment had fallen in 2014, seven million Americans could only find part-time positions, it says, citing media reports.

According to money.cnn.com, the number of people working part-time involuntarily is more than 50 percent higher than when the recession began, and almost 30 percent of involuntary part-time workers were unemployed for at least three months in a year, the report says.

Meanwhile, the income inequality has been continuously growing.

Over the past decade, the incomes of the richest Americans have grown by 86 percent, while the incomes of everyone else have grown at just a little over six percent, according to the report.

A Pew Research Center study showed that the percentage of people who classified themselves as middle class has shrunk to 44 percent in 2014 from 53 percent in 2008. At the same time, the study showed, those who classified themselves as lower- or lower-middle class has risen to 40 percent in 2014 vs. 25 percent in 2008, it says.

In 2013, the difference in income between the country's rich and poor was the highest in almost 80 years, it says, citing The Washington Post.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, in 2014, 65 percent of all Americans believed inequality was growing, the report added. Endi